Can a YouTube video that claims you can remove water from a wet phone just by regenerating it really help recover a wet phone?

There must be many people who have accidentally wet their smartphones by being caught in a sudden downpour while using their smartphone outdoors or by using their smartphone near a water source. For such occasions, a movie that can play the 'sound of removing water from a smartphone' has been released on YouTube, and the IT news site The Verge is verifying whether it is really effective.

Testing the YouTube videos that promise to get water out of your phone - The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/27/24228925/remove-water-phone-youtube-vergecast

The movie featured by The Verge's David Pierce is below. The title is 'The Sound of Removing Water from a Phone Speaker (Guaranteed),' and it features a fantastic animation of swirling stained glass and a deep, low buzzing sound that continues for about two minutes.

Sound To Remove Water From Phone Speaker (GUARANTEED) - YouTube


At the time of writing, the movie had been viewed more than 45 million times, and many users have posted comments about how they got their smartphones wet, such as 'I took my smartphone into the shower or bath and got it wet,' 'I splashed a glass of water on it,' and 'I dropped my smartphone in the sink while washing dishes.'

Pierce also said that in early 2024, when a relative dropped his smartphone into a river while on a trip, his companion played this movie, and the smartphone was safely spared from failure. Since then, he has been wondering, 'Does the movie really have the effect of draining water, even though the waterproofness and water resistance of mobile phones have improved so much in recent years?'

So when Pierce asked Apple, Google and Samsung, he was only referred to a support page that showed what to do if your smartphone gets wet. However, Eric Freeman, senior research director at audio equipment manufacturer Bose, said, 'What speakers actually do is push air out. So if you can push enough air out with enough force, you might be able to push the water out of its place.' Smartphone speakers are small, but Freeman said it's quite possible that they could push the water out by playing bass at high volume.

This principle is actually applied to the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch uses a system that vibrates the inside of the speaker to drain water from inside, and the following article will explain how it drains water.

How does the Apple Watch, which allows you to swim while wearing it, drain the water that gets inside? A slow-motion movie that shows

So, Pierce, along with iFixit's lead disassembly engineer Shahram Mokhtari and iFixit intern Chayton Ritter, conducted an experiment to see if a movie could be played on a wet smartphone to see if it could be drained.

Four models were used in the experiment: iPhone 13, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 3, and Nokia 7.1. Pierce and his team prepared water with a dye that reacts to ultraviolet light and soaked each smartphone for about a minute. After removing the smartphone, they lightly drained the water and played a movie, left it overnight, then exposed it to ultraviolet light to check how much water remained.

As you can see from the GIF animation below, the effect of the movie was that a large amount of water droplets were sprayed from the smartphone in every model. Pierce reported that 'it was clearly effective.'

However, smartphones have other holes besides the speaker, such as the SIM card slot and USB port, so simply playing sound through the speaker does not mean all the water will drain out. Only the Pixel 7 Pro had almost no water left, while the iPhone 13 and Pixel 3 had a little water left, and the Nokia 7.1 was 'more or less ruined.'

Below, the iPhone 13 is exposed to ultraviolet light, and the areas where water has penetrated and remains glow green. Mokhtari also pointed out that 'the sealability of the phone changes over time, so it may be damaged without you realizing it.'

Reporter Pierce summarizes that 'waterproofing and water resistance of mobile phones are improving,' 'waterproofing and water resistance of mobile phones may deteriorate over time,' and 'the probability of failure may increase further if the phone is in seawater or water mixed with detergent rather than fresh water.' Nevertheless, since the effect of the movie was confirmed, we recommended that the movie be bookmarked as a last resort in case of emergency.

Pierce also mentioned that the advice he received from everyone he consulted was to 'not bring your smartphone into the bathroom.'